Reputation Effects Everywhere: Mad Men, Season 5, Week 6

Derrick Rose is out for the season and a weekend that started badly might have ended sadly with another super dark episode of Mad Men. Instead, we got a few comedic rays of sunshine to break through the gloom – Pete tricking Megan’s pretentious father, Peggy’s mother’s surprise that Abe’s favorite dish is ham etc. Those of us looking to enliven our courses with the odd example here or there had to wait till the end.

Don is busy trying to drum up new business at his award dinner. He got the award for an anti-cancer ad he took out in the newspaper after losing the Lucky Strike cigarette account. But a colleague’s father rains on Don’s parade. He says that no-one will give Don any new business after he stabbed Lucky Strike in the back. Don signaled to the wrong audience in the last period of the Lucky Strike game. He tried to co-opt consumers by pretending to be concerned about their welfare. But consumers will not give his firm new accounts, firms selling crap to them will. And with them Don lost his reputation – will he also throw them under the bus if things turn sour? Life is an infinite horizon game with many bilateral interactions. Lose your reputation in one and, if your behavior is publicly observable, lose your reputation in all.